The Week That Was: ADIF's view on Google's new ad platform, our first institutional partnership, and some ecosystem updates.

A round-up of our activities and highlights from the Indian startup ecosystem this week.

Yesterday's start-ups are today's unicorns – these were the words of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to our nation on the 75th Independence Day. Applauding India’s startup ecosystem, he further noted: "Today, several start-ups have come across various sectors, in tier-1 and tier-2 towns. They are becoming wealth creators and are seeing their market value increase despite the Covid pandemic."

On this Independence Day, we have compiled the latest updates from ADIF, our blog posts this week as well as news from the Indian startup ecosystem all in one place for you. Happy reading!

ADIF’s work and latest activities

Our comments on Google’s new ad platform. Our executive director, Sijo Kuruvilla George, was quoted in the Hindu Business Line on Google’s decision to phase out third-party cookies and replacing them with Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC).

If you have any thoughts on Google’s FLoC, please share in the comments section or write to Tom Thomas, who heads Policy and Research at ADIF, at tom@adif.in.

Our support to South Korea's proposed revision to the Telecommunications Business Act. We also extended support to South Korea’s proposed amendment to the Telecommunication Business Act – which has the core of the ban on forced in-app payments. We believe this is a major step to counter app marketplaces from owning all in-app transactions and charging an unfairly high commission on all in-app purchases.

Full text of the letter is available here.

Letter to the Finance Secretary on the abolishment of retrospective tax. We wrote to Shri Dr. T. V. Somanathan IAS in support of the government’s decision to abolish the retrospective taxation provision on indirect transfers of Indian assets. We, ADIF, believe that this move will further strengthen trust between the government and industry.

Full text of the letter is available here.

An Open House with AIC Raise and our first institutional partnership. On August 10, Jibin Jose hosted an open house and AMA in association with startup incubator AIC Raise. It was conducted as part of the MoU signed between ADIC and AIC Raise on an institutional partnership – our very first one!

We had over 20 participants that included both AIC Raise startups and others. 

The partnership is to help strengthen the Indian startup ecosystem. As part of it, ADIF will extend its alliance membership to all the startups that are a part of AIC Raise.

To know more about the partnership, or any other queries about joining the ADIF alliance, please reach out to Jibin Jose, who oversees Startup Relations at ADIF, at jj@adif.in or +91 9633908735 (Whatsapp).

Latest from our blog

How Supersourcing's co-founder secured seed funding from his mentor: Paytm founder VSS. In this interview with Mayank Pratap, we learn how being persistent (and a lot of patience) helped in his journey as a startup founder.

Explainer: FLoC – Google's proposed alternative for third-party cookies. What exactly is FLoC? Why is it being opposed? What are ADIF’s views on it? Find the answers here.

#FundingAlert: Crypto exchange CoinDCX raised $90 million, UpGrad raised $185 million, and more. Learn about the latest funding news here.

Updates from the ecosystem

Ixigo filed for Rs 1,600-crore IPO.
MapmyIndia partnered with Drone Federation of India.
Eruditus turned unicorn after $650 million round.
CoinDCX became India’s first crypto unicorn.
Paytm wants to more than double its ESOP pool.
Fintech startups got $2 billion in first half of 2021.

That’s all for this week, thank you for reading!

We look forward to your feedback to improve this newsletter and make it more relevant to you. You can e-mail me at amanat@adif.in.

Regards,
Amanat Khullar
Content & Editorial, ADIF

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